And what did the bitch do? She turned me down and cut me off.
I glanced at the newspaper Troy threw at my desk. The headline smeared in cheap, black ink.
Busted! Billionaire Gerald Fitzpatrick’s Mistress Writes an Explosive Tell-All!
Barbara McAllister’s testimonies could be a game changer for the royal American family. The company’s stock has dropped significantly since yesterday.
It did nothing to improve my sour mood, even though I knew, in all probability, that Gerald was on the verge of hurling himself out the window from the skyscraper he was currently holed up in.
Troy fell into the seat in front of me, lounging back, rolling a toothpick in his mouth.
“Time for a quick and efficient K.O., Sam. I will not sit here and watch you destroy a perfectly good family just because you have a boner for Gerald’s blood. Don’t forget your sister’s marriage and happiness is on the line, too. You are taking this God complex too far.”
“There’s nothing complicated about my godly gift to distribute pain. I’m merely giving Gerald what he deserves.” I dropped my pen, sitting back. “He—”
“Yes, I know. Killed your unborn brother. Made your mother leave you behind. No one is propositioning Gerald Fitzpatrick for knighthood.” Troy raised his palm up, cutting through my words. “Yet here you are, alive and fucking well, much to the Bratva’s chagrin. This means whatever damage he inflicted on you didn’t finish the job. So why don’t you get it over with, give him the final blow, call it even and move on?”
Because then I’ll have to face my other Fitzpatrick problem.
The pressing one I’ve been trying to ignore for weeks.
Their daughter.
Aisling stayed far away from me since she fled the cabin in the middle of the night like a dumb horror flick side character, the first to get murdered ten minutes into the film.
I knew she survived our little showdown because I drove by her clinic the following afternoon, just to make sure she hadn’t been chopped up by an axe murderer on her way out of the woods.
Her Prius was parked in front of the main door. She was alive, even if not well.
Consequently, she was also done with my ass.
“I want a confession,” I insisted.
“And I want to fuck my wife ten hours a day. Guess what? Looks like we’re both not getting what we want,” Troy snapped. “What makes you think Gerald is willingly going to come to you and tell you all about how he fucked your mother then fucked you over?” Troy stood up, spitting his toothpick on the floor. “Grow the fuck up, Sam. Your story doesn’t add up, and frankly, with each passing day, I’m starting to think there’s more to this than you’re letting on. You’ve never given a damn about Cat, and yes, she left you, but she’d tried to contact you and you shut her down without a blink of an eye. It’s not the first time you’ve been wronged by one of your clients. You are a pragmatic person. You take things in stride. This is a part of you I don’t know and don’t care to discover. Emotional, messy, and above all—strategically faulty. You are about to make some pretty grave mistakes if you are not careful. I can see it. Be upfront with Gerald or drop it altogether. But this is the last prank you pull on him. Your sister is married to his son, and now that Hunter and Cillian are watching their mother and paying attention, they’ll be on your tail in no time. You understand?”
“Are you done?” I asked, sitting perfectly still in my seat, rejecting any sentiment that stemmed from Troy looking royally and thoroughly pissed at me. This was a first. We’d had our arguments before, of course we had, but we always ended up seeing eye to eye. Not this time. “Because if so, you know where the fucking door is. I’m sorry the student outdid the master, but sometimes, old man, that’s just the way it is.”
He stared at me with a look of complete disbelief. Despite myself, I felt my stomach roiling, turning over and over, like it was folding into a small origami square.
He offered me a noncommittal grunt and dashed away, leaving the faint scent of his cologne and a hell of a headline on the newspaper.
I turned my attention back to the Excel sheet, noticing, for the first time, a company trip to the Maldives I could use to max out the expenses proportion. An easy eight-hundred-thousand-dollar hole in the budget to throw the IRS off.
I started making the necessary moves.
Gerald would pay for what he did with his blood.
Even if it cost me my relationship with my adoptive father.
After working into the wee hours, I stopped by the card rooms again, checking on the tables, making sure we were making killer profits before locking up my office door.